COVID in the Age of Psychoanalysis

I am an analytic candidate, and at the time of writing this, I have been sick with COVID-19 for fifty-three days. In the early weeks of my infection, as my fever rose, so did my fear of death. The questions that ran through my mind were as follows: Will I be the one among my loved ones who does not survive? Will I be the candidate at the institute who sadly died during the pandemic? Will the abstract fear of a ventilator shortage become concretely life or death if I need one to survive? Should I have been bolder in love? Do I have time to say what needs to be said, to write what needs to be written? Am I proud of my life? How will I be remembered?

There is a unique terror to realizing one has the virus that is killing people all over the world. But my experience in psychoanalysis has helped me to survive this anguish. It has prepared me to bear the losses from an abrupt break in clinical work, as both an analyst-in-training and as a patient. Psychoanalysis has helped me to face our precarious future and my fear that there might not be enough time left to mourn all we are rapidly losing.

The sudden pause in sessions with my analyst, amassed on top of the disruption of working remotely during the pandemic, left me terrified. Could this be the end of my analysis? In ways, that question felt more urgent than how ill I might get. More questions ran through my mind, and they too sickened me: Would my analyst be disappointed that I could not move faster, and heartbroken for an unrealized potential? Would she remember me in my moments of cowardice or my moments of bravery? How would she grieve for me? How would she mourn the loss of what might have been in our work together?

Psychoanalysis produces an increased capacity for thought and uncovers new potential. As repression lifts or new translations of the unconscious become available to oneself, the mind becomes more dynamic. But my illness had limited not just my physical capacity, but also my mind's. My brain moved slowly, a